Five years after the passage of ObamaCare, there is one expense that’s still causing sticker shock across the healthcare industry: overhead costs. The administrative costs for healthcare plans are expected to explode by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade, according to a new study published by the Health Affairs blog. The $270 billion in new costs, for both private insurance companies and government programs, will be “over and above what would have been expected had the law not been enacted,” one of the authors, David Himmelstein, wrote Wednesday. Those costs will be particularly high...

Sacramento — California´s budget, which bounced back after years of deficits, is now being squeezed by rising healthcare costs for the poor and for retired state workers. The mountain of medical bills threatens to undermine Gov. Jerry Brown´s efforts to strengthen state finances — his central promise of the past four years. Enrollment in the state´s healthcare program for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, has exploded by 50% since President Obama´s signature law took effect. Although the federal government picks up most of the tab, state costs have also been growing, and faster than expected. Meanwhile, the annual bill for

Harvard not only educated the president but has steadfastly supported not only him and even his more controversial policies, until now. “For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost,” Robert Pear reported in The New York Times on January 5, 2015. “But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.” “Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that...

Schumer: Feds should cover Ebola costsALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Sen. Charles Schumer says the federal government should reimburse New York City and Bellevue Hospital for costs related to Ebola. The Democrat says Sunday that more than $20 million has been spent on tracking health professionals and others arriving from Ebola-stricken countries and treating Dr. Craig Spencer, a physician who recovered from the illness after receiving treatment at Bellevue.

In a speech yesterday at Northwestern University, President Obama declared that the Affordable Care Act is “working pretty well in the real world”—a claim he couldn’t have made this time last year. Now, armed with surveys of the uninsured rate and CBO reports, his administration can take credit for “good, affordable healthcare”—but only by citing choice data and dwelling on those parts of the law that disguise its defects as virtues. Still, that’s a big improvement from where the administration was last October. It’s been a year this week since the launch of healthcare.gov, the health insurance exchange website through...

A Never-Ending Scheme:: By: Larry Walker, II ::According to the New York Times, “Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal.”And, “If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first American refugee effort...

Though she was successful signing up for one of the Affordable Care Act health insurance plans, Shelby Higdon has been unsuccessful in her quest to obtain medicine for her condition. The problem stems from a mismatch between her actual gender and what is recorded in the ACA computer files. An ACA employee who asked to remain anonymous explained that “Shelby is a man’s name. She can’t expect us to overlook that. Her mother’s complaint is especially galling. She could’ve prevented this years ago if she’d simply named her daughter Shelly—an obvious girl’s name.” “We’ll probably get this straightened out eventually,”...

A new study commissioned by PhRMA finds that many consumers in ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges could end up paying more than twice as much in out-of-pocket drug costs. The report for the nation’s top drug lobby was conducted by actuarial firm Milliman, which found that people on the Silver Plan, the most popular ObamaCare plan, would likely pay 130 percent more for out-of-pocket prescription drugs compared to people on similar employer-sponsored plans. One reason why out-of-pocket costs are likely to be higher is because employer plans are more generous than typical Silver Plans, according to the report. However, the numbers don’t...

The health insurance industry fighting proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage payments argued they will raise seniors' out-of-pocket costs next year. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group, blasted the reductions with a report Thursday finding that beneficiaries could pay as much as $900 more in 2015 if the cuts take effect. The report by consulting firm Oliver Wyman concluded that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans could see a 5.9 percent total cut to their payments next year as a result of changes proposed by federal health officials. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) floated a 2015 cut of...

**SNIP** In addition, there’s the hidden surprise waiting for those who are enjoying subsidies to help them pay for the insurance. If they have a “major life event” like getting married, or getting a raise or a promotion with a higher salary, not only could the subsidy disappear but any subsidy they enjoyed prior will have to be paid back. **SNIP** The clock is ticking as the November elections draw ever closer. Senate Democrats up for reelection who voted for the ACA are finding themselves facing unhappy constituents and newly energized challengers along with critical TV ads from conservative groups...

Someone stumbled across this spreadsheet on the ObamaCare website last night and it’s been zapping around Twitter ever since. Is this information … supposed to be public? I thought the whole point of forcing people to register before showing them the prices is that they didn’t want you to see how expensive the plans are until you’d already been lured with the promise of subsidies.

However, in a recent speech in Maryland, Obama challenged Americans to go to “the website” to see how much money they could save under Obamacare. He said that once you do and find out how much you save, you’re going to sign up “even if you didn’t vote for me.” The website in question is www.healthcare.gov, and I did go to see how much money I could “save” under Obamacare.

President Barack Obama’s two day trip to South Africa in June cost taxpayers more than $2.2 million on hotel room and rental car costs alone, according to documents released by the State Department on Sunday. All told, the trip cost as much as $100 million according to a pair of Republican House members. The first family’s trip to sub-Saharan Africa was criticized by Reps. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) and Steve Stockman (R., Texas) in June for its high price tag in the wake of budget cuts due to sequestration, though the visit went on as planned. The president’s “VIP visit”...

To quote Obama – “…it turns out you’re going to save a hundred, two hundred, three hundred dollars a month on your insurance…” This is the lowering of costs that he and all liberals have been touting since the beginning of this entire health care debacle back in 2010. “We’re going to lower costs.” But the problem they do not mention is that they are only talking about premiums.

It seems counterintuitive to some people, but government subsidies can harm the very people they are meant to help. So it is with the way Michigan funds higher education. Consider that 12 percent of college graduates in 1970 came from the families in the bottom 25 percent of income earners, but today that number is 7 percent, according to Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity at Ohio University and an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Meanwhile, the six-year graduation rate is about 55 percent. That is, nearly half of students do...

... each Tomahawk cruise missile likely to be fired on Syria costs an estimated $1.5 million each to replace. That's great news for Raytheon (NYSE: RTN ) , which builds the missile, but not for the Navy's budget. Plus, if the U.S. fires missiles, that'll add an additional $30 million per week for as long as the Navy's Nimitz and Truman are engaged in combat. Those costs may not seem like much when you factor in overall defense spending, but thanks to the nature of sequestration, the Navy, as well as the rest of the military, is hurting.

President Obama unveiled a new plan Thursday designed to shame colleges and universities over rapidly escalating tuition costs, warning the nation is facing "a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt." At a series of events across New York state, the president touted his order to the Department of Education to create a new ranking system that grades universities on their value to students, providing applicants with a clearer idea of which schools give students the best bang for their buck. He also proposed tying federal aid to the rating system, arguing that the federal government should not...

WASHINGTON — In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014. The grace period has been outlined on...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put out a press release today promoting the savings to consumers from Obamacare in 2012. The department claims that the average consumer receiving a refund will get about $100 as a result of rules on how insurers must spend premium dollars. The press release contains the following curious characterization of ineligible expenses health insurers might incur: Created through the Affordable Care Act, the rule requires insurers to spend at least 80 cents of every premium dollar on patient care and quality improvement. If they spend a higher amount on other expenses like...

It’s an open-and-shut case: Rates will go up a lot under Obamacare. By James C. Capretta Last month, the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy — joined by Lanhee Chen, Yuval Levin, and Dan Kessler — set off a firestorm by audaciously challenging the prevailing Obamacare-friendly story about what will happen to premiums when the law’s implementation begins in earnest in 2014. Specifically, Roy and the others disputed the initial news stories coming out of California, fed by state officials, which indicated that the premiums paid by state residents enrolled in the Obamacare exchange would be lower in 2014 compared with 2013....

Health Costs: Americans were promised that ObamaCare would make their health care more affordable. But a pair of studies show the new system has done nothing to lower health costs and will sharply raise them. Between 2009 and 2011, U.S. health spending rose just 3.9% a year, the lowest annual gains in decades. The Obama administration was quick to claim credit for the slowdown, with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying ObamaCare had "contributed to the slowest sustained growth in health spending in 50 years." But two new studies make it clear that ObamaCare wasn't behind the slowdown...

Health care spending in Minnesota is on the rise again. Per-person spending by the state's nonprofit health insurance companies on medical care during 2012 rose 5.1 percent from the previous year, according data released Monday, April 1, by the Minnesota Council of Health Plans. That was a significant jump compared with the rate of medical cost inflation during 2010 and 2011, according to the St. Paul-based trade group. In 2011, for example, the annual increase in per-person spending was 0.4 percent -- likely because some patients delayed elective procedures during the slow economic recovery, experts say.

MADISON – Here are some lists you don’t want to finish first on: •Worst human being •Guy with most head lice •The naughty list (well maybe you do, you kinky devil, you) •Charlie Sheen’s ‘Hey, What’s in This Punch?’ party •The Society of Actuaries list of top five states facing the steepest health care cost hikes under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Wisconsin comes close to topping the latter list. The Badger State checks in at No. 2 on the Society’s ranking of states expected to be most impacted by underlying claim costs under the ACA, derisively referred...

The costs of Obamacare are not just hitting businesses this year--they are also hitting the government, and public employees as well. Virginia, for example, is about to limit part-time employees to 29 hours per week in order to avoid triggering Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health insurance to those working 30 hours per week or more. The state cannot afford the $110 million annual cost of insurance. Elsewhere, public institutions are taking similar steps to limit part-time work. In Ohio, Youngstown State University recently announced a 29-hour-per-week part-time limit, and placed employees on notice that they would be fired if...

Encouraged by the recent election results, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) boasted that “the Republicans’ contention that excessive government regulation causes increased unemployment has been convincingly refuted by voters.” “Of course, the GOP’s arguments were ludicrous from the beginning,” Reid maintained. “If we pass new regulations the government has to hire more people to enforce them. That means more jobs. Companies have to hire more people to ensure they comply with the regulations. That means more jobs. The regulations are kind of like a scissors cutting into unemployment from both sides.” The possibility that more regulations could boost the...

IN 1946, a British newspaper shocked its readers by running an article with this ominous-sounding headline: “Nearly Half of U.K. Student Grades Are Below Average.” Read that back to yourself slowly, and you’ll realize, of course, that the law of averages would have it no other way. But man, does it sound bad. In his new book, “The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t” (Yale University Press) William J. Baumol uses that headline to help us understand his central idea about the diverging paths of certain costs in our economy. Mr. Baumol and a Princeton colleague...

"To say it as plainly as I can," President Obama told the American Medical Association in 2009. "Health care reform is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health. That is a fact." Considering that the explosive growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending are the driving forces behind our current deficits, Obama was dead right in that 2009 speech. But in 2010, on the eve of the passage of Obamacare, Obama told the House Democratic Caucus, "Everybody who's looked at it says that every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually...

Guilford College in North Carolina is poised to raise the prices they charge students for health insurance by 75 percent as a direct result of the implementation of President Obama’s landmark healthcare legislation, administrators told Campus Reform late last week. The price for university provided health care is expected to rise from $668 to $1,179 for the 2012-2013 school year, Greg Bursavich, who is the Vice President for Finance at Guilford College, told students in a letter late last month. “Our student health insurance policy premium has been substantially increased due to changes required by federal regulations issued on March...

How's that workin-out... The Congressional Budget Office never did quite buy-into the Obamacare 'savings' spiel; their far-more sober assessment after 'finding out what's in it' produced a federal cost estimate of $944B for the decade (2010-2019). Yet last week Forbes took a fresh look at the CBO's lastest and found forecasts in a clear uptrend over the last two years, so much so that Obamacare's total decade cost now stands at an eye-watering $1.856 TRILLION, with over $1.3B of that deficit spending, not-at-all paid-for yet. Although the costs have already doubled, the article made it abundantly clear that most of...

Government agencies, who have a vested interest in justifying what they spend, expanding what they do and making a case for more of both, are hardly disinterested parties. Witness the EPA, that political entity dating to the Nixon Administration, which was created much like opening a Pandora’s box. The unforeseen consequences continue to pour forth to degrees not even Rachel Carson could have imagined. One of the short-comings of the mainstream media is that it swallows then regurgitates so much of what the government has to say about itself without bothering to critically examine, or even to seek out other...

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic Party-controlled state Legislature and the army of bureaucrats and tax collectors doing their bidding have triumphed again. California-based Apple Computer will build a spanking new, $210-million manufacturing plant. In China. Is anyone surprised? The corporate tax rate in California is horrendous, the workforce is taxed worse than the corporations, the cost of living is off the charts thanks in large part to the costly burdens added by government regulations and housing, well, you know how that compares for California versus the rest of the world...

Survey: Which States Are Small-Business-Friendly? Posted By Walter Olson On May 11, 2012 @ 3:38 pm In Government and Politics,Regulatory Studies As Tad has noted [1], Thumbtack.com in cooperation with the excellent Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City has produced this attractive, clickable map [2] of the 50 states displaying the results of a survey of small-business friendliness. It’s worth checking out your state’s standing, as well as that of states with which it competes for new business. To a large extent the findings come in just about where one would expect: California plus the Northeast (aside from New Hampshire) are...

State transportation officials have slashed the price tag for California's controversial high-speed rail project by $30 billion and expanded the first stretch of track to run from Merced in the Central Valley south to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The California High Speed Rail Authority's revised business plan, which will be released Monday in Fresno, calls for those dramatic changes as the agency prepares to ask the Legislature to use $2.7 billion in state high-speed rail bonds to start construction by early next year. The drastic revision, which puts the proposed cost of the system at $68.4 billion...

One year after the passage of ObamaCare, this paper published an op-ed I wrote ("ObamaCare and Carey's Heart") about how America's health-care system saved my daughter's life, and describing how implementing this law will limit innovation, lead to rationing, and lower the quality of care. Now, two years out, I would like to focus on the budgetary disaster. As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that his health-care plan would lower annual family health-insurance premiums by $2,500 before the end of his first term as president. But the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the average family premium has increased...

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius says she has no idea on what the fiscal impacts of Obamacare might be. “I haven’t really approached the issue from that perspective,” Sebelius told Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc) at a recent hearing. “We’re just trying to make sure everyone and everything is covered. Maybe we’ll take a look at costs later when we have more time.” Senator Johnson’s suggestion that all the requests for waivers that HHS has granted indicate a problem with cost was brushed aside by the Secretary. “First of all, I don’t know which waivers you are...

Politics Buzz Mitt Romney has been firmly pro-life since his 2005 conversion after legislation came to his desk in regard to Stem Cell research. But a trek over to the website of Commonwealth Care, the state funded health insurance program for low and moderate-income Massachusetts adults who don't have health insurance, created by RomneyCare, offers a copay for abortions.

The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group that tracks employer-sponsored health insurance on a yearly basis, shows that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. “The open question is whether that’s a one-time spike or the start of a period of higher increases,” said Drew...

Okay. So it’s too late for some fried brains – but better late than never. From Reuters: Now, a Dutch commission has found that hashish and marijuana on sale in the Netherlands contain around 18 percent of THC, the main psychoactive substance, and advised the health minister that anything above 15 percent put drugs on a par with heroin or cocaine. “I've been very worried for years about the THC concentration, especially if it is so high. We will take a serious look at it," Health Minister Edith Schippers told public broadcaster NOS. “The addictive consequences are much stronger and...

How much did the Obama administration’s knee-jerk moratorium on offshore drilling cost residents on the Gulf of Mexico last year? Although the moratorium was lifted after six months, the Heritage Foundation notes that nothing changed. It was only after tens of thousands of jobs were lost and gas prices soared that the Obama administration began approving a permit here and there. This lagging energy exploration has had serious impacts on the energy industry and, as a result, the entire U.S. economy:

If you've tried to buy a used car recently -- a lot of people are finding it hard to get what they want. There is something of a used car shortage going on. News 10NBC found out there are a number of factors why there are fewer used cars out there. One is -- more people are holding onto their new cars longer but also, there are fewer rental cars coming on the market and fewer people are leasing vehicles so therefore -- fewer of those cars are out there. Joan Kamisch is trading her 2000 Chevy Lumina for a...

A Tomahawk missile costs $1.4 million. If you don't know that, you haven't paid attention to the debate over the Libya War. The war is America's first conflict initiated against the backdrop of $1 trillion deficits, and as such practically every strike is subject to the accountant's bean-counting. Our first fusillade of 160 cruise missiles, we are told, cost hundreds of millions of dollars alone. Even Indiana's Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican establishmentarian and internationalist of long standing, argues the cost of the war is too damn high. "Who has really budgeted for Libya at all?" he asks. Yes, by...

Madison - Law enforcement agencies ran up more than $3.2 million in pay, overtime, mileage, food and hotels while providing security during weeks of protests at the Capitol, according to preliminary numbers compiled by the Journal Sentinel.The total bill is certain to go higher, largely because some municipal police departments and county sheriff's departments have not completed totaling their bills, some invoices are incomplete and costs for some larger law enforcement agencies, including the Wisconsin State Patrol, were not immediately available.

With U.S. and coalition forces bombarding Libya leader Muammer al-Qaddafi's forces from the sea and air, the cost for the first day aloneÂ of the operation was well over $100 million with the total price tag expected to grow much higher the longer the strikes continue, analysts said.(Snip) With allies expected to shoulder some of the bill, the initial stages of taking out Libya's air defenses could ultimately cost U.S.-led coalition forces between $400 million and $800 million, according to a report released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments earlier this month. Maintaining a coastal no-fly-zone

Forget Medicare, THIS Is The Chart That Shows Why America Is Doomed Joe Weisenthal Mar. 6, 2011, 8:16 AM If you look at the US fiscal situation, it's easy to see that Medicare is a looming black hole ready to swallow the entire economy. Reforming the entitlement seems necessary to prevent fiscal ruin. But actually that's too narrow a way of looking at things. After all, the costs borne by Medicare are no more sustainable if they're shifted to private individuals. It's just the path is different. The REAL problem is how expensive our healthcare system is compared to its...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Workers at a circuit-board factory here just saw their health insurance premiums rise 20 percent. At Buddy Zaremba’s print shop nearby, the increase was 37 percent. And for engineers at the Woodland Design Group, they rose 43 percent. The new federal health care law may eventually “bend the cost curve” downward, as proponents argue. But for now, at many workplaces here, the rising cost of health care is prompting insurance premiums to skyrocket while coverage is shrinking. As Congress continues to debate the new health care law, health insurance costs are still rising, particularly for small businesses....

Madison -- Administration Secretary Michael Huebsch estimated Wednesday that law enforcement costs to provide security at the State Capitol through February would likely total $4 million to $5 million.

(snip)Filing taxes takes too long, costs too much money and is far too overwhelming a process for taxpayers. (snip)"If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States," the report says. "To consume 6.1 billion hours, the 'tax industry' requires the equivalent of more than three million full-time workers."

<p>You can't blame New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he feels some satisfaction over news out of the MTA.</p>
<p>A new report by Inspector General Barry Kluger found that the transit agency's major development projects -- the Second Avenue subway, the LIRR link and the Fulton Transit Center -- are five years late and $2 billion over budget.</p>